Philosophy 290-8

This course will focus on a close reading of Plato’s Meno. Plato seems to
have written the Meno soon after he wrote the early Socratic dialogues and
the Meno addresses many of the basic ethical topics found in these
dialogues: the search for an ethical definition (in this case, “what is
virtue?”), the idea that no one desires what is bad, and the question of
whether virtue is teachable. The Meno breaks from Plato’s earlier writings
by being the first dialogue in which Plato directly discusses
epistemological issues. The topics he raises are of fundamental importance:
whether inquiry is possible, how to use hypotheses in philosophy, how to
distinguish between knowledge and true belief, and why we should value
knowledge. This course will examine these topics through a close reading of
the text, using secondary literature as an aid. We will also look at
relevant passages from other Platonic dialogues so we can think about how
this dialogue fits into Plato’s overall philosophical development.
Throughout the course, I will put particular emphasis on how these new
epistemological questions raise potential difficulties for the ethical
project laid out in the early Socratic dialogues and how Plato’s response to
these questions is designed to resolve these difficulties, thereby securing
Socrates’ ethical project.